


Timing

by thedevilchicken



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Matchmaking, Post-Canon, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:31:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herc lost more than anyone realised the day they closed the breach. And timing was never exactly Raleigh's strong suit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Timing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DigitalMeowMix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DigitalMeowMix/gifts).



“Did you know?” Raleigh asked. 

“I did not,” Mako replied. 

“But he--”

“Was a very private man,” she said. 

And so the wheels started to turn in Raleigh’s head, and he could see that Mako knew exactly what he was thinking. He should’ve been embarrassed; it was hard to be embarrassed around Mako anymore. She’d been inside his head, after all. She knew all his dirty little secrets. He knew hers. 

“You should not,” she said, with a disapproving cant of her head. She was really good at communicating pretty much exclusively in head-tilts. It was impressive, when you got to understand it. But head-tilt or not, they both already knew he was going to do it. It was all just a matter of timing. 

Of course, timing had never exactly been Raleigh’s strong suit. That day was a bad idea to start it, he guessed, the day of the memorial service, even though it’d been more than a month since they’d blown the shit out of the breach. They’d needed to delay, get the news out, get the adrenaline out of their systems, before they could get to the flag-folding and the photographs and the sea of uniforms in the hangar bay. But there was something to be said for just getting shit done and besides, he thought maybe he’d just chicken out if he left it alone for too long. He’d let it stew and then it’d fester and then Mako would tilt her head the way she did to say _I told you so_.

So, there he was, in his PPDC dress uniform that was just like the one he’d worn at Yancy’s memorial that day he still kinda wished he didn’t remember, standing outside Marshal Hansen’s quarters, playing with the shiny brass buttons on his jacket that he’d forgotten to polish so Mako had done it for him with a shake of her head. He knew it was a bad idea, at least on an intellectual level, but Mako was clearly the intellectual of the team. And hell, he at least knew he’d’ve appreciated the sentiment himself when Yancy died, even if it seemed like really shitty timing. 

He knocked. He waited. Then his new boss opened the door. 

“You look like hell, Marshal,” Raleigh said, because he did, though that wasn’t quite what he’d meant to say and his expression must’ve said so. Herc just laughed wryly, tiredly, as he ran a hand over his short hair, as he rubbed at the back of his neck. 

“Yeah,” he agreed, standing in the doorway. His uniform jacket was off already, on a hanger dangling from the front of an open locker, his shoes unlaced. “What can I do for you, Raleigh?”

“It’s more what I can do for you,” Raleigh said. But it sounded so trite and everything else he’d thought he’d say and he’d practiced saying in his head on the way over from his own quarters had apparently turned to mush and run straight out of his ear and so he stood there like a jackass with Herc frowning at him dubiously.

“Look, I don’t read minds…” Herc said, after the first few awkward seconds, as Raleigh stood there playing with his cuffs like they were too long or too short and hadn’t actually been made to measure even if it’d been a rush job. And apparently that was what it took to jolt him out of it because he took two steps forward, quickly, and the next thing either of them knew, one of Raleigh’s hands was at the back of Herc’s short hair, the other had a handful of Herc’s untucked uniform shirt, and he laid one on him like he meant it. He pressed his mouth to Herc’s, awkwardly, a bit too hard, not what he’d had in his head at all, and then stepped back smartly with a hell of a frown. It was over as quickly as it’d started.

“I…” Raleigh said. “Just, if you need anything. I mean. If there’s anything I can do.”

Herc raised his brows and crossed his arms as he leaned against the door frame with a faint, amused, bemused smile. 

“Yeah, I’ll bear that in mind, Raleigh,” he said. “Now why don’t you get your arse out of here before you really get yourself into trouble.” 

So, it hadn’t gone well. He hadn’t crashed and burned, though, so there was always that - Herc could’ve kneed him in the groin or knocked him on his ass in the corridor, after all. And so, once he’d changed out of his damn uniform and he’d gotten down into the mess hall and shoved his tray onto the table next to Mako’s, his spirits were back up. 

“You seem pleased with yourself,” Mako said, taking a bite of what might’ve been mashed potatoes. It was sometimes hard to tell. 

“I’ve got a plan,” he said. 

Okay, so it wasn’t much of a plan. Herc was in full-on marshal mode by then, kicking ass and taking names all around the shatterdome and on crappy long-distance conference calls with the UN, too. _Look what happened last time you shut down the program_ , he told them. And, when Raleigh and Mako stepped up: _These two saved the bloody world, you want to tell them they’re unemployed?_ And then, when all was said and done: _I lost my son and I lost my partner because of penny-pinching bureaucrats like you. You shut us down and the kaiju come back and_ everyone’s _sons die and_ everyone’s _partners die. Okay?_

They signed off on the funding for five jaegers and the Hong Kong shatterdome over the next five years, though they’d made some kind of stipulation that once the jaegers were online they’d be used to help rebuild, get some of the cities back into shape. Raleigh put one hand on Herc’s shoulder as the viewscreen clicked to static then to black, squeezed, and Herc looked at him sidelong, cautious. 

“Good work, Marshal,” Raleigh said. He was standing a couple of inches too close by and he knew it, and Herc obviously knew it, too. Maybe it wasn’t obvious to everyone else in the room, or maybe they were just trying to make themselves look busy. Mako just shot Raleigh a long-suffering glance of faint amusement and left him there. She liked to let him get into his own messes, even if she’d help him sort through them later. 

“I’d say it was a team effort,” Herc said. And for a moment he didn’t move away. For a moment he stood there and he let Raleigh rest his hand on his shoulder and let him stand too close, watched him watching him, before he gave a sharp little nod and stepped back. “Get some rest. We’re sending you and Mako out to Vladivostok in the morning.”

“Vladivostok?”

Herc nodded. “You’re picking up a couple of half-dead old mark twos. You think we have fully-functional jaegers just sitting around in storage?”

Raleigh wasn’t sure what he’d thought, but putting together five jaegers from scrap sounded like just the kind of over-complicated scheme Mako was gonna love. She made a hell of a jaeger pilot but she also knew all the ins and outs of how they went together. You really had to love that about her. 

They were back from Russia three days later with a bunch of jaeger scrap that got spread out all over the hangar and Raleigh went back to the plan while Mako worked. He brushed against Herc as they passed in corridors. He stood shoulder-to-shoulder when they went out into the hangar to check on Mako’s work - damn, she was good at what she did, and he was such a lucky son of a bitch. He and Mako took a seat with Herc in the mess hall at dinner each night and Raleigh glanced at him, watched him, as they made small talk with Mako about the jaeger builds and repairs and what new parts she was going to need, what they were going to need to order in and what they could build in-house, all the crap that Pentecost had taken care of before but now Pentecost was gone. It was a loss they all felt, everyone in the shatterdome, just some more than others.

And that was the problem: Pentecost was gone and Chuck was gone and Herc Hansen had lost everything he’d had left that day when they’d finally closed the breach. The rest of his family had already been gone but when Striker Eureka blew down in the Challenger Deep, she took his obnoxious son and his stubborn partner with her. They’d been married for three years, he said at the memorial, and shocked the hell out of everyone. No one had known except Chuck, he’d said, and now Chuck was dead too. Maybe Raleigh didn’t know what it was like for him exactly, but when he’d lost Yancy he’d lost everything, too, and hell, even Mako was dealing with the whole thing better than Herc seemed to be, pushing it down and pushing it aside after his confession at the memorial. But he guessed at least Mako come out of it with her drive team partner intact; that was more than Herc had. All Herc had was his job.

He found him in the showers one morning after the first couple of months and it wasn’t even like he’d tried to - his timing was just pretty shitty sometimes. He walked in and there was Hercules Hansen in the communal showers and he was used to the notion because it wasn’t like shatterdomes were any different from the rest of the military in the world in that particular respect: no private showers. Of course, maybe outside of a shatterdome on a land-based military complex the commander of the damn force wouldn’t be showering with the rest of the men. Herc probably wouldn’t have wanted any special treatment anyway.

Raleigh stepped in, turned on the shower and set about washing his hair. And he knew he shouldn’t, but glancing at Herc just a few metres away was pretty damn hard to stop because okay, the guy still looked tired and gaunt and half pissed off at the world but apparently being pissed off and gaunt and tired hadn’t done anything to make him less easy on the eye. Raleigh felt like a special kind of pervert for thinking it though Mako would probably have found it hilarious in that subtle head-tilting way of hers. But the sixth or seventh time he glanced Herc’s way, he was already being watched. 

“You’re about as subtle as a trainwreck, Raleigh,” Herc said. He’d turned to him under the shower head, his arms crossed over his chest as he leant with one shoulder against the tiled wall, and Raleigh knew he’d been caught red-handed. He opened his mouth to say something, not totally sure what that was, but then Herc shifted his weight, uncrossed his arms, and Raleigh watched one hand go down over his abdomen, following the trail of coarse fair hair right down to the base of his cock. It was like he did it on purpose so Raleigh’s eyes would follow. Maybe he did. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.

“Look, if you’re going to just keep touching me up for the rest of forever till you get what you want then we might as well just get it over with now,” Herc said. And he came closer, wet feet patting against the wet floor. He pushed Raleigh up against the wall, cold tiles against his back making him shiver as much as the hand that went around his cock did. “Yeah?”

Raleigh nodded. “Yeah.”

Herc brought him off like that, stroking him under the shower spray with his mouth pressed into the crook of Raleigh’s neck; when Raleigh was done, weak-kneed and flushed, Herc stepped back and Raleigh was pretty sure Herc’s prickly damn beard had burned his throat. It hadn’t gone to plan. Herc gave him a wry smile and he went back to his own shower. Herc didn’t look his way again. 

Maybe it shouldn’t have happened again the following morning, or the morning after that. Maybe Raleigh should’ve found a different shower room somewhere else in the shatterdome or gone in earlier or gone in later but there he was four days after that and then five, coming in the shower with Herc Hansen’s hand around his cock just like he’d imagined back when Gipsy had deployed in Manila with Lucky Seven that time because damn, the Hansen Brothers had been his and Yancy’s heroes back then. The sixth day, Herc went down on his knees and Raleigh could almost’ve come just from the look of him looking up at him, never mind when he actually took him in his mouth. Herc grumbled under his breath about his knees afterwards, when he was back under his own shower head, and Raleigh started to wonder what the hell he’d gotten himself into. It wasn’t what he’d intended at all, though fuck knew what he’d intended. It wasn’t like he’d spent a whole of time thinking it through.

Six days and then seven then two full weeks of it, Herc pushing him back against the wall, Herc’s mouth pushed up under his jaw, biting and sucking till he had a damn hickey under his artistic stubble like he was back in high school that wouldn’t fade for a month the way it looked. Another week, Herc going down on his knees, his mouth on him, his fingers going back to tease between his cheeks or maybe that wasn’t teasing. Then, one morning, the middle of week five, Herc shoved him up face-first to the wall and Raleigh let him do it, thrilled by it and not just by the novelty; Herc got himself off rubbing up against the crack of Raleigh’s ass, his hand around Raleigh’s cock, and fuck, that was hot. Herc muffled a groan against the back of Raleigh’s shoulder as he came against him and Raleigh realised right then, like a total jackass, that _that_ was the first time Herc had gotten off from it. For four whole weeks and more, it’d just been Raleigh getting his happy ending, and Herc looked appalled at himself when he’d finished and he’d stepped away. He left before Raleigh could stop him. He wasn’t sure how to.

Mako looked at him over breakfast that morning with the faintest of frowns and faintest tilt of her head. Raleigh didn’t need to tell her something had changed. She didn’t need to tell him _I told you so_ and not just because it was all in the look on her face. She didn’t need to tell him what she thought he should do next. They didn’t need to be in the drift to understand each other. 

Herc wasn’t in the showers the next morning or the morning after that. He stepped away when Raleigh got close, when they met down in the hangar, checking construction progress - it was all going well, if more slowly than anyone really liked. He was missing at lunch for three days. And on the fourth day, Mako sighed at Raleigh at dinner, over her overcooked fish and undercooked rice. 

“Yeah, I know,” Raleigh said. “You told me so.” 

She inclined her head, a sort of half-nod. She really didn’t have to say it because he’d gone ahead and said it for her. She didn’t have to tell him he needed to fix it because they both knew he knew he had to. Maybe he hadn’t been the one who’d balked but he’d been the one who’d started it.

So that was how he wound up back at Marshal Hansen’s door the next day, loitering outside like a total asshole, working himself up to it, pacing back and forth in the corridor while passing people gave him a wide berth and that wasn’t just because he was one of the guys who’d saved the world. And before he could finally work himself up to knock, Herc’s door opened. Mako stepped out with a quirk of her brow and Raleigh’s gaze followed her the length of the corridor till she turned the corner. She only looked back for a second. 

“I could hear you bloody well pacing from in here,” Herc said, stepping into the doorway, and Raleigh turned back to him. “Will you just put up or shut up, for Christ’s sake?”

Raleigh frowned. Raleigh took a breath. Then his decision was made: he walked Herc back into the room and he shoved the door shut with one booted heel behind them. 

Maybe they should’ve had a conversation. Maybe they should’ve sat down at the table and talked it out and talked it through over a drink but neither one of them was the talk-it-out type so Raleigh guessed he’d have to find another way. That was fine because it wasn’t like he wanted to talk about it anyway, so he took Herc by the shoulders and he marched him up against the nearest available wall. And he kissed him, just like he’d done that first time, that first day in their uniforms, except he was a hell of a lot more insistent about it. 

Herc pushed him away; Raleigh raised his brows. Herc sighed; Raleigh gave him a big sardonic smile. And then, finally, Herc buckled and he moved and he kissed him back. 

It was messy. It was messy because there wasn’t really any other way for it to be because Herc probably thought he was stomping all over the memory of his dead partner and Raleigh was half convinced he was doing it out of some kind of demented hero-worship, the last Becket and the last Hansen. Somehow they made it across the room while they pulled wildly at each other’s clothes, Herc’s worn old vest lost somewhere under Raleigh’s shirt, boots in a heap they’d have to untangle later. They went over on Herc’s bunk, heavily, the springs groaning beneath them as Raleigh wound up on top and struggled with Herc’s belt till he had to pull back and go up on his knees to unbuckle it. 

It was messy after that, a struggle to get down to bare skin out of pants and boxers and socks that wouldn’t come off until Raleigh was kneeling there between Herc’s thighs and neither of them could’ve looked like they knew what the fuck they were doing because it seemed pretty obvious they didn’t. But Raleigh pressed on, leaned down to press his mouth to Herc’s chest, trailing down hotly, getting lower till Herc’s erection was nudging under Raleigh’s chin and maybe Herc tried to tell him he didn’t have to do it but that was the point - he didn’t _have_ to. He took Herc’s cock in his mouth, swirled his tongue over it and Herc groaned against his own forearm, utterly failing to keep quiet. 

Every single thing they’d done before, Herc had been in control. Raleigh sucked him then, his hands gripping tight at Herc’s thighs, and Herc reached up to the head of the bed to hold on because he _wasn’t_ in control, his breath was hitching and his hips were shifting and Raleigh could almost have gotten himself off right then and there with his own hand on his cock and the idea in his head of Hercules Hansen losing it right there in bed with him. But he pulled back, he slicked up Herc’s cock with the lube he’d brought with him for _precisely_ this purpose and he sank down on him with a series of unsteady breaths. Herc looked up at him, flushed and breathless as his palms skimmed Raleigh’s thighs and reached for his hips. And they moved together, awkward at first, their rhythm pretty crappy till suddenly it wasn’t and Herc’s back arched and he bucked and came inside him. Raleigh wasn’t long in coming after that himself, Herc watching him do it the whole time. 

They cleaned themselves up after, washcloths over the washbasin under the mirror in which Raleigh kept glancing at Herc who kept glancing at him, too. Even tired and gaunt and pissed off at the world, Herc Hansen as he caught his breath and half-smiled at him was more than he’d expected it would be. There was a hell of a lot more to the man than the hero.

“Y’know, Mako’s right,” Herc said, as they crouched together after that, untangling their clothes, sorting them, Raleigh’s pants from Herc’s socks from Raleigh’s boxers from Herc’s vest. Looked like neither of them had cared where their stuff had ended up.

“She always is,” Raleigh agreed, as Herc tugged on his shirt over his head and realised it was Raleigh’s with a huff of laughter. He pulled it back off again to hand it over and Raleigh took it from him. “What’s she right about now?”

“You shouldn’t have done this,” Herc said. But there was that wry smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he pulled on his boxers, stood on one leg to put on one sock and then the other. And Raleigh stepped up close; he’d managed to get both socks and his shirt on and nothing else and maybe he should’ve been embarrassed by his weird state of undress, it all hanging out, but all he did was step into Herc’s space and take his scruffy-bearded face in his hands. 

“Yeah, so I’m not Stacker goddamn Pentecost,” he said, blunt about it but sometimes he didn’t know how else to be, and Herc looked him in the eye. “But I’m not trying to be.” 

“Mako said you’d say that,” Herc said. “And she said you’re dumb as a stump ‘cause you don’t listen and you don’t pay attention and I tend to agree with her.” Herc’s hands settled at Raleigh’s bare waist, thumbs tracing the outlines of his hipbones. “I never said you were trying to fill anyone’s shoes, you dag.” And that wry smile was back as he tilted up his head to rasp his stubbled jaw against Raleigh’s palms, so Raleigh brought them down to his shoulders, down to his biceps. “But she also said I should give you a chance. She says we’ve…” He did something that was almost wincing. “She says we’ve got a lot in common.”

And Raleigh knew what he meant, knew what Mako meant. They’d both lost so much over the years. And maybe he’d never gotten over Yancy’s death and maybe Herc had never gotten over getting his brother kicked out of the PPDC and that was before they even started on any of the recent crap they’d all been through. They understood each other. Raleigh wasn’t just looking for a good time. Herc wasn’t looking for a replacement.

They dressed then, they chatted, they went down to the mess hall for breakfast and Mako was already there; Raleigh could’ve sworn there was a smile on her face as she turned back to her tray, and he and Herc sat down together in a clatter of trays and cups and cutlery.

“She’s smart,” Raleigh said, low enough so she couldn’t hear from her end of the long table, and Herc chuckled under his breath.

“She’s smarter than either of us, that’s for damn sure,” Herc replied. 

They’d be okay, Raleigh thought. Mako glanced their way and he shot her an exaggerated wink that made her smile as she let strands of blue hair fall down in front of her face. Mako had her work and she had him, whatever consolation that was, didn’t have as much as she’d had before but she had a world that’d go on turning. And he and Herc, well. Perhaps they weren’t exactly star-crossed lovers but maybe they’d get by. They had a world to rebuild, after all; if they could do that, they could damn sure help rebuild each other. 

And so maybe, Raleigh thought, his timing didn’t suck half so much as he’d thought it had. Or maybe it did: he just had a blue-haired engineer in his head who knew how to give it a damn good tune-up.


End file.
